A 3D Printed Teacup (and a render of one!)

[chriswilmer]

Hi guys,

I've been a long-ish casual user of Luxrender, but this is my first post of a work I'm sort of proud of. It's not a magnum-opus by any means, I spent an hour or two on it... but I'm pleased with the results and would like your expert-eye feedback!

I've modelled a teacup which I got 3D-printed from Shapeways in glazed ceramic (I'm drinking out of it right now). I decided on a whim to take a photo of the teacup with an iPhone and render the same model in Luxrender and try to make it as hard as possible to tell which image was from the iPhone and which was from Luxrender. Currently, my friends are having a not too easy time telling which is which, but I'm sure it will be obvious to you. My question is, how do I make the Luxrender image more "realistic" and more difficult to tell apart from the iPhone photo.

If asked, I will provide all of my materials settings.

Luxrender is awesome, by the way. If all goes well, a high impact science journal may soon have a luxrender image as cover art...

-Chris

[SATtva]

Cool test. Just switching them back and forth, maybe i have to toss up a coin, it will be easier to choose then. Well, i guess the second one is a photo if you haven't postprocessed it too heavily.

[Meelis]

Hi

Yeah, 2nt is photo.

[J the Ninja]

The noise and the floor detail makes me think the second one is the photo. It's pretty hard to tell from the lighting, but my first instinct was that #1 was the render, since the lighting just looked too "neat and perfect".

#2 the cup itself also seems less detailed. Unless you rendered a lower-res mesh than you sent shapeways, that would indicate, again, that #1 is the render.

[SATtva]

What gives up the second one to me is the less obviously procedural floor (more irregularities) and more aberrations.

[chriswilmer]

Yup, you all guessed correctly... so, what's the message then? If I had a better texture for the "floor" that would help a lot? I'm not using an environment map for the lighting, but I wasn't sure how much that would help.

[SATtva]

Yes -- good realistic texture for the floor and some postprocessing to resemble cheap sensor noise and chromatic aberrations. Also see this.

[A-man]

Also it looks like ou used chiu noise reduction, I don't know if you did, but your render looks a tiny bit blurry, which is a result of that noise reduction method, as it isn't edge-aware. Anyways, I'd suggest letting it render longer rather than using built-in noise reduction for maximum realism.

[B.Y.O.B.]

I also noticed a yellowish light on the handle on the photograph.

[chriswilmer]

Thanks for all of the suggestions!